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- [00:00]
Emily Gracey
From the pages of fantasy to the reality of our world. The direwolf, the legendary guardian of House Stark, has leapt from the Game of Thrones into an actual existence after 10,000 years of extinction. Colossal Biosciences claims to have successfully created the first de extinct dire wolves using DNA from ancient fossils. But as we race to resurrect species from the woolly mammoth to the dodo bird, we're venturing into uncharted territory. Today, we're going off the radar and diving into the ethics of de extinction. We'll explore the profound questions this technology raises. Just because we can bring back extinct species, should we what are the ecological implications? And who profits from playing God with genetic code? I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [01:05]
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- [01:33]
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- [02:03]
Emily Gracey
In the winter hush during a snowfall, when the air is so crisp and quiet you could hear a twig snap. Prey animals are on high alert if they're aware of their surroundings. They're constantly scanning the environment, looking ahead and behind, side to side, sniffing for any scent of a predator that the winds might blow their way. But a good hunter knows how to hide from its prey until just the right moment. Larger, faster prey animals tend to have an advantage over smaller creatures. Even a gray wolf tends to go after smaller targets. But in the case of the Dire wolf. It's thought that a pack of wolves could easily take down large prey animals like horses, bison and even woolly mammoths. They had razor sharp teeth and a stronger bite than other wolves. And their larger body size meant more muscle mass and greater overall power. The dire wolf once paced the plains, forests and mountains of North America. Like its modern day descendants, these apex predators were ferocious hunters. But the dire wolf was much larger. They grew up to 6ft long, nose to tail and weighed about 150 pounds. That's almost 25% heavier than gray wolves. Researchers believe that while the dire wolf was well adapted to hunting large prey animals, it couldn't compete with the smaller, faster gray wolves who hunted smaller, faster prey. When large mammals like the woolly mammoth went extinct, dire wolves were left unprepared for the new reality that a changing climate and evolving ecosystem presented. It's a species of wolf that's been extinct for 10,000 years. What we know about their hunting habits and lifestyle comes largely from fossil records at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, for example. The high concentration of dire wolf fossils suggests that the animals hunted in packs like their smaller relatives, the gray wolf. But now theories are finally able to be put to the test. Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences recently announced the completion of their first in a series of so called de extinction projects. It's an endeavor that sounds straight out of the pages of Jurassic Park. But instead of extracting dinosaur DNA from fossilized mosquitoes, Colossal Biosciences extracted DNA from a 13,000 year old dire wolf tooth unearthed in Ohio and a 72,000 year old direwolf skull that was excavated in Idaho. Using these genetic markers, scientists were able to bioengineer DNA that's a 91% match with that of an extinct direwolf. Researchers then implanted the direwolf DNA into dogs egg cells to facilitate a surrogate birth. Appropriately enough, the first two wolves were born and named Romulus and Remus, the names of twin brothers in Roman mythology who were raised by a wolf. The third wolf was named Khaleesi, after the character in Game of Thrones. George R.R. martin's books and TV series feature direwolves and Martin is a cultural advisor and investor to Colossal Biosciences. The biotech company doesn't plan to stop with dire wolves. They're also planning de extinction projects involving woolly mammoths and dodo birds. And de extinction is big business in qtel. A venture capital firm affiliated with the CIA has been a substantial investor in Colossal Biosciences But Jeff Goldblum has a famous line in Jurassic park that may come to mind.
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AT&T
Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so.
- [05:14]
Emily Gracey
Preoccupied with whether or not they could.
- [05:15]
AT&T
They stop to think they should.
- [05:17]
Emily Gracey
What are the ethics of de extinction? The dodo bird went extinct hundreds of years ago. It's thought that dogs, pigs, and macaws drove the species to extinction after humans introduced these mammals to the bird's native island. De extinction of dodos may feel like a course correction for historical human behavior, but what about dire wolves and woolly mammoths? My guest today is Dr. Jay Odenbaugh, a professor and researcher with a concentration in philosophy of science. He has studied the ethics of de extinction and written extensively on the topic. And with the recent direwolf news, his work now feels more relevant than ever. This is all abuzz on the Internet, right? People are going wild for this direwolf, something that maybe people haven't even heard of until the past couple of days. So let's talk about this. Can you give me a little background on what actually has happened here with Colossal Biosciences and what they've done with dire wolves?
- [06:12]
Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Yeah, so, you know, dire wolves went extinct somewhere 13,000 years ago. Ish. And the Colossal has basically used precision gene editing to take essentially two samples of dire wolf bone and I believe a tooth fragment and extract DNA from it. And what they did was, is about 14 genes from a gray wolf. Modified those genes so that you would get essentially what is, by all appearances looks like a dire wolf has the same kind of call, you know, same body, musculature, hair color, all that. And so that's what they've done just recently.
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Emily Gracey
Has this ever been done before?
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Not. Not in this way. I mean, I think, you know, we. We all probably heard about Dolly being cloned many, many years ago. But this is surprising both because most of us didn't know this was about to happen. Right. Mo. There has been a lot of attention on woolly mice because of the Woolly Ma. Possible revival, as we might call it.
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Emily Gracey
Right, okay, so you say revival. There's the. The word de extinction being thrown around out there right now. Another word that I've never heard of until this past day.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Well, there's. There's also resurrection. Sometimes people use that word too. Right.
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AT&T
Wow.
- [07:30]
Emily Gracey
Okay, so this is why I'm talking to you, the philosopher, because I want to know, is this actually de extinction? I want to know all your thoughts on. On what's going on here.
- [07:38]
Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
I'm suspicious in this case that we actually have A dire wolf. And the reason is, is that essentially what we've done is modified what we haven't modified gray wolf genes so that you get the appearance of something that looks like a dire wolf. It's because that you're modifying gray wolf genes that that's really why I'm a bit suspicious. In some gene editing, you splice the DNA from ancient extinct organisms into, say, if you're going to create a woolly mammoth, you might take DNA from woolly mammoth and then splice it into Asian elephant. This case is a little bit different than that. Well, the other thought is, I mean, I think the best case scenario, if you really wanted to think this is a dire wolf, best case scenario is this is a hybrid between gray wolves and dire wolves. Because you are using the information from direwolf genes to create, you know, this remarkable. I mean, it's clearly a remarkable creature, whatever it is.
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Emily Gracey
Right, okay. So I guess what a lot of people are wondering too, is, is why. Why would anybody do this?
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
You know, this is a fantastic question, and I think there are a lot of rationales. One rationale is that it looks cool, and so we should do it. Kind of a. Almost a Jurassic park like, justification.
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Emily Gracey
I was run around a lot too.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Yeah. If we didn't learn anything from that movie, what are we doing? Right. The different sort of thought here is that, you know, it was a wrong. It was wrong to, you know, drive dire wolves to extinction. I'm assuming it's partly human ca. And if we could bring them back in a way, that would be kind of repairing a wrong that we did. But that depends crucially on whether or not this is really a direwolf. You know, if someone wrongs you by taking something that's yours that's not theirs, they make amends by returning it. Right. But I can't give that back to someone that looks like you, but it's not really you, and that be an act of restoration.
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Emily Gracey
The world that actual dire wolves lived in was very different than where we are now. So what are the implications here? When we talk about, like, what's the prey, what's the predator, what are they eating? Where are they living?
- [09:49]
Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Yeah. So right now, they are in an undisclosed ecological reserve, I think. You know, if you do, there are dire wolves, many people who want to see them, and people who might be really worried about this might, you know, want to remove them. So, you know, it's a secret hideout, as it were. As. As it is now. I think they're being fed. You know, basically Various kinds of meat, horse meat, cattle, you know, beef, et cetera. But for all intents and purposes, it seems that they will be on this ecological preserve forever. Right. Which raises another ethical concern, which is the well being of those individual wolves. If they never can exhibit the kind of predator instincts they have or if they're. Apparently they're very nervous around humans even they're, you know, the ones that have handled them after birth, they stay pretty far away from. They, they're not, they're not like dogs though. They, the DNA, the embryos were placed in mixed hounds so that they could gestate and be born. So I really worry about what's the life of a dire wolf. You know, basically in a pen, a glorified pen will be right.
- [11:03]
Emily Gracey
And that's the direwolf. And they say their next project is the woolly mammoth, coming soon in 2028. So what does that look like? And I don't understand the purpose of that either.
- [11:12]
Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Well, the, you know, that's an interesting case because one of the things that people worry about when it comes to climate change is permafrost melt. So if you go to Siberia, there's all this methane and carbon beneath the, beneath the surface. And as that snow melts with warming temperatures, you might think, well, is there a way to stamp, you know, prevent that permafrost from melting? One thing that woolly mammoths did thousands of years ago was that they, you know, snapped down that snow, they knocked over trees, etc. And that basically prevented that kind of permafrost melt. So the thought is if we could reintroduce woolly mammoths, they could do this really valuable thing for us, this kind of ecological role. But you know, there again we're introducing woolly mammoths, or sometimes they're called mammothants. We'd be reintroducing them into an, or introducing them to a habitat they know nothing of. It's tundra, but it's, you know, it's human transformed. So sometimes scientists call this a no analog environment because there's no analog for this in their, you know, their life history.
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Emily Gracey
Yeah, there's so many parallels here with like climate change and geoengineering and then the whole, like, what are the long term impacts here? So what are the long term impacts here? If we start de. Extincting other animals and bringing them into this world, could it mess up entire ecosystems?
- [12:36]
Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
It certainly could. You know, if, if you started thinking about the kinds of things that lived in North America, well, you know, beyond before us, think about, you Know, there were saber toothed tigers, there were, you know, giant ground sloths. You know, there's. If you wanted to bring those back, I mean, it would be remarkable to see creatures like that. But where are you going to put them? And, and, and can we live with them in a way that's, you know, makes sense. I worry also there's two other worries I have, one of which is if you spend money on these projects, what are you not spending money on? Including other conservation projects. I know that Colossal is doing conservation work in particular related to things like genetic bottlenecks when there's too much inbreeding in a population that can lead to disease, et cetera. And so they are working on conservation issues. But one is we sort of take our eye off other threatened or endangered species. That's one thought. The other one is, I think there's a misnomer that appears, namely for any species that goes extinct, you can just bring it back. And so we don't have to worry about extinction. And that's not true. One thing about de extinction is most animals that you could bring back, or plants too, DNA degrades over time. And so outside of about 10,000 years, you can't use that DNA. So we can only really bring back really recently extinct species at best. Right. So I worry that the cells conservation are kind of a bad message, namely we can bring back things and not worry about it.
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Emily Gracey
So you're saying Jurassic park is not going to happen then?
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
No, you can't get pterodactyls and T. Rexes and so on because they're too long extinct. Right. We couldn't recover their DNA even if we found, you know, some sort of deep, deep, deep in some, you know, place to paleontologists could dig up.
- [14:31]
Emily Gracey
Okay, well, let's talk about humans because one of the projects that Colossal is working on is an artificial womb so that they don't have to impregnate dogs with these things. But my thought is, are they going to use this for human beings? And then my thought goes to, are we going to try to genetically Engineer Humans from 10,000 years ago?
- [14:51]
Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Right. There is, there has been talk about Neanderthals. Right. We share a certain percentage of our DNA with Neanderthals because earlier humans interbred occasionally with other species in our genus. You know, I think gene editing has the potential to do some really remarkable things. So if you could engineer human genes where people who would be otherwise be born blind or deaf, you know, that you might think that's a really powerful piece of technology that would benefit human lives. But when you start thinking about designer babies and engineering humans to, you know, to be as attractive, as culturally as you might think, I really worry about that kind of. Essentially, it's a form of eugenics. Right. You're designing humans to be as you want them to be. And that's a, that's a dangerous road.
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Emily Gracey
It is. And I hear friends who have gone through IVF recently in recent years, and I went through it a long time ago, 13 years ago. So I'm curious about, because I hear them say, well, we had one egg or we had one embryo that was male and one that was female, and we went with the female. So they, they can actually pick the gender of their baby at this point.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
That's right. There's also, you know, being able to, you know, all of us have phenotypic traits, the things that you see. Right. And so you, you might want to have a child who's taller. Right. I'm relatively short, but, you know, I can imagine my parents saying, oh, we want Jane to be 6 foot. Right. You know, those kinds of things are, in a way, I think they play to some of our worst vices. Judging people on superficial qualities. Right. But that's, that's. We've opened Pandora's box and these are the things that we're now having to confront.
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Emily Gracey
So who is it who controls science? Is there any sort of ethics control on science?
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
You know, there are a variety of controls. I mean, for example, if you're going to do human research, you have to, you know, basically there's lots of complicated forms and legislation and rules around that with regard to animals, non human animals, you know, it's much more of a free, it's free in, in, in other ways.
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Emily Gracey
Right.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Because I can't, you know, a direwolf can't give you informed consent about what, what's happening. Right. They can't sign off on it. So there are rules. But I think it's one thing that's really important to note. Colossal is a private company. Right. It's not. It's essentially doing this because there's no prohibition against it. And it's happening outside of federal government or university research and so on. So it's kind of a wild west at this point. And I think we need to think very carefully about the path we're going. And it's not to say that gene editing or IVF or any of these things aren't wonderful tools. They can be, but we have to be thoughtful about them.
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Emily Gracey
Yeah. And I Was looking at the list of investors for Colossal, and it ranges from the creators of Game of Thrones to the CIA.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Right.
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Emily Gracey
Which is very interesting.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
Well, there's no accident. Their names are Romulus, Remulus, and Khaleesi. Right. The three new direwolves.
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Emily Gracey
It's good marketing technique.
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
It is. It is.
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Emily Gracey
Is there anything else you want people to know or think about deeply when it comes to genetic engineering and moving forward in the future?
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
You know, one thing that you often will hear people say is that they worry about playing God. They worry about humans being, you know, acting without humility and making decisions that really fundamentally change our planet. And I think that's a very serious worry. But I also worry about people who have a. Sometimes it kind of. It's called Ludditeism. Right. The idea that machines are bad and technology is bad. If you think de Extinction is bad, you also have to think gene editing is bad. And gene editing could be and has been an important technology that can improve our lives. So we have to find a balance between very extreme views. And in many ways, you know, we've opened the door and now we need to think carefully about the ethics behind all of it.
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Emily Gracey
Well, at least we have people who think on both sides, which, if we were all genetically engineered, wouldn't be the case. Right?
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Dr. Jay Odenbaugh
That's right. That's right.
- [19:00]
Emily Gracey
The irony off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or where we listen to podcasts. We also publish every Tuesday. Thank you to Dr. Jay Odenbaugh for joining me today to talk about de Extinction. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer, Brian Petras for his writing contribution to this episode. Also, thank you to Cyline for connecting us with Dr. Odenbaugh. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.
- [19:45]
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